Chomsky on Gun Control
From "Secrets, Lies and Democracy" - Noam Chomsky Interviewed by David
Barsamian. Published by donian Press, Tucson AZ, 1994.
Gun control
Q: Advocates of free access to arms cite the Second Amendment. Do you believe
that it permits unrestricted, uncontrolled possession of guns?
It's pretty clear that, taken literally, the Second Amendment doesn't permit
people to have guns. But laws are never taken literally, including amendments
to the Constitution or constitutional rights. Laws permit what the tenor of
the times interprets them as permitting.
But underlying the controversy over guns are some serious questions. There's
a feeling in the country that people are under attack. I think they're
misidentifying the source of the attack, but they do feel under attack.
The government is the only power structure that's even partially accountable
to the population, so naturally the business sectors want to make that the
enemy--not the corporate system, which is totally unaccountable. After decades
of intensive business propaganda, people feel that the government is some
kind of enemy and that they have to defend themselves from it.
It's not that that doesn't have its justifications. The government is
authoritarian and commonly hostile to much of the population. But it's
partially influenceable--and potentially very influenceable--by the general
population.
Many people who advocate keeping guns have fear of the government in the
back of their minds. But that's a crazy response to a real problem.
Do the media foster the feeling people have that they're under attack?
At the deepest level, the media contribute to the sense that the government
is the enemy, and they suppress the sources of real power in the society,
which lie in the totalitarian institutions--the corporations, now international
in scale--that control the economy and much of our social life. In fact, the
corporations set the conditions within which the government operates, and
control it to a large extent.
The picture presented in the media is constant, day after day. People simply
have no awareness of the system of power under which they're suffering. As a
result--as intended--they turn their attention against the government.
People have all kinds of motivations for opposing gun control, but there's
definitely a sector of the population that considers itself threatened by big
forces, ranging from the Federal Reserve to the Council on Foreign Relations
to big government to who knows what, and they're calling for guns to protect
themselves.
Radio listener: On the issue of gun control, I believe that the US is becoming
much more like a Third World country, and nothing is necessarily going to put
a stop to it. I look around and see a lot of Third World countries where, if
the citizens had weapons, they wouldn't have the government they've got. So-
I think that maybe people are being a little shortsighted in arguing for gun
control and at the same time realizing that the government they've got is not
exactly a benign one.
Your point illustrates exactly what I think is a major fallacy. The government
is far from benign--that's true. On the other hand, it's at least partially
accountable, and it can become as benign as we make it.
What's not benign (what's extremely harmful, in fact) is something you didn't
mention--business power, which is highly concentrated and, by now, largely
transnational. Business power is very far from benign and it's completely
unaccountable. It's a totalitarian system that has an enormous effect on our
lives. It's also the main reason why the government isn't benign.
As for guns being the way to respond to this, that's outlandish. First of
all, this is not a weak Third World country. If people have pistols, the
government has tanks. If people get tanks, the government has atomic weapons.
There's no way to deal with these issues by violent force, even if you think
that that's morally legitimate.
Guns in the hands of American citizens are not going to make the country more
benign. They're going to make it more brutal, ruthless and destructive. So
while one can recognize the motivation that lies behind some of the opposition
to gun control, I think it's sadly misguided.